OTTAWA, Ont. – Provisions relating to access to medicines in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal will cement high drug prices and undermine the health of hundreds of millions of people for generations, the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE (OCHU) charged today. The TPP has been negotiated between Canada, the U.S. and 10 other Pacific Rim countries.
“The Harper government negotiated a trade deal that will raise the price of drugs and reduce the availability of lower cost generics, and strengthen and create new patent and regulatory monopolies for pharmaceutical products. The federal Liberal government should not sign off on this deal. This is simply a continuation of the ‘race to the bottom’ economics of the Harper government,” says Michael Hurley, president of OCHU.
There are many concerns that have been raised about the TPP deal. Chief among them are criticisms that the deal poses a growing and unaffordable financial burden on Ontario consumers and hospitals (that provide drugs free to inpatients) and will deprive citizens of poorer countries of access to life saving medicines because of cost.
“People in poorer countries will die because of the lack of access to affordable medicines, while the drug companies will grow even wealthier. The drug companies do not need the protection of the Trudeau government — consumers and patients in Canada and around the Pacific Rim do,” says Hurley.
Doctors Without Borders has raised the alarm on:
- “patent ever-greening,” which will force TPP governments to grant drug companies additional patents for changes to existing medicines, even when those changes provide no therapeutic benefit;
- 12 years of “data exclusivity” for vaccines and drugs to treat conditions such as cancer and multiple sclerosis which will block government regulatory authorities from allowing price-lowering generic competitors to enter the market with previously generated clinical data;
- the exclusion of brand-name drugs and vaccines from direct competition for excessively long periods of time while patients and health systems endure unnecessarily high prices.
For more information please contact:
Michael Hurley
President, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions
416-884-0770
Stella Yeadon
CUPE Communications
416-559-9300
